Raspberry Red
by quiet-little-wallflower
Summary: 'All that was left was all encompassing hunger and right in front of him lay a raspberry cupcake held together by snow white patty paper. His stomach groaned loudly, drowning out something his mind was trying to tell him. Something about a girl who had died in a bed of snow.' written for the Starvation one-shot challenge


He'd walked past the bakery everyday on the way home from school. It was out of his way, putting an extra ten minutes on his journey home; but it was always worth it. He'd press his face up against the window, so much so that his nose became as squashed as a pug and he'd stare at all the lovely items the baker had put on display.

There were the usual bread rolls, the average white, the poppy seed covered and the lovely cheese filled kind. Titus would have happily devoured any of those if they'd been thrown his way but it was the sweets, the dessert pastries and cakes that made him salivate, that made the horrible pang of hunger he was almost always feeling tie knots around his insides.

In particular he had fallen for the sweet raspberry cupcakes that the baker always put in the dead centre of the display window. They were all dressed in perfect little white patty pans and the ruby red icing that was dolloped so generously atop the fluffy cakes was always dribbling down the sides, staining the patty pans a more muted red. He'd even fancied the candied flower that sat so delicately in the middle of it, the purple petals curling skywards around a powdery yellow centre. He would have eaten the flower first, that's for sure. He could only imagine how subtle the crunch would be when he broke the candy petals with his teeth and how sweet and tart the icing would taste.

He'd wanted that cake so badly, but he'd never had the money for it. He would never have the money for it. He was poor, doomed to suffer the pain of an aching belly for the rest of his life.

He couldn't help but think of those cakes as he sat shivering in the snow beside the body of the girl from nine that was still warm, still so fresh. She'd been such a pretty girl, with rustic red hair that fell around her shoulders and the most delicate facial features. He remembered marvelling at her beauty during training, remembered how fascinated his district partner Claudia had been with the girls eyes.

"Do you see how they are such a dark blue they're almost purple? They're that color people always mistake for violet eyes, she's got faux violet eyes."

When he found her in the arena hunched around a fire there was no time to admire her beauty. There was no time for anything like that anymore, it was all about survival.

The poor girl, she hadn't even seen him coming, she'd fallen into a crumpled heap at his feet the second he smashed the rock on the back of her head. His first kill, a necessity he kept telling himself. For him to survive she needed to die, there was no point feeling bad about it all, no matter how much he'd admired her in training.

He'd rolled her over, not wanting her face to freeze in the snow and he'd been immediately transfixed by the dribble of blood running down her porcelain forehead.

The cupcakes flashed in his mind. The icing dripping down white paper pattypans. The ruby red coloring. The purple flower.

He was so hungry, more than he'd ever even been at home, where there wasn't much food to find anyway. He hadn't eaten for days. His stomach was gnawing at itself, doing all kinds of awful acrobatics. He couldn't even think straight, couldn't really even remember where he was. All that was left was all encompassing hunger and right in front of him lay a raspberry cupcake held together by snow white patty paper. His stomach groaned loudly, drowning out something his mind was trying to tell him. Something about a girl who had died in a bed of snow.

He didn't see any girl though, all he saw was one of those cupcakes he'd spent his whole life pining for.

One bite, then two. The fluffy cake part didn't come apart as easily as he'd thought it would. It was tough and hard to bite through but he somehow managed. The flowers were more chewy than the crunch he'd always expected and the raspberry icing was somehow more metallic than sweet but it was still rewarding. Three bites, then four, then five. The taste seemed to get better with each messy mouthful. The ruby red icing was even runnier than it had looked at home and it stained his hands as well as his lips blood red.

The word blood pushed its way into his mind alongside the constantly nagging message about that dead girl in the snow but he ignored it.

Titus had finally got one of those cupcakes with the ruby red icing. That's all that mattered to him now.

* * *

**AN: **This was written for the prompt "Icing" in the Starvation forum. I was just having a casual browse and figured I might as well give it a shot :)

I've also come to realize I write some strange stuff, almost all my stories end up morbid in some way.

anyway I hope you enjoyed it (if this kind of thing can be enjoyed? I don't even know)


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